Social influence on students’ perception of teaching quality

Students’ perception of their teacher’s instructional quality is strongly linked to academic motivation and achievement. At the same time, students, and especially friends, also influence each other’s perception of teaching quality. In this study, MiSoC researcher Zsófia Boda and co-author Lisa Bardach look at social influence on teaching quality among secondary school students in Germany. Using longitudinal social network data and models, they examone the influence of friends on teaching perceptions as well as the role of similarity in teaching perceptions when selecting friends. The models also take academic achievement (as well as gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status) into account. They find no significant effect of peers in the perception of teaching quality.